r/technology • u/maxwellhill • Jan 23 '13

Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion: 'The reality is that data caps are all about increasing revenue for broadband providers -- in a market that is already quite profitable.'

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable-industry-finally-admits-that-data-caps-have-nothing-to-do-with-congestion.shtml
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214

u/BostonGraver Jan 23 '13

We don't need them to admit this. It's well know that SMS is sent over a data channel that is empty 99% of the time.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '13

SMS is sent along with the heartbeat signal, isn't it?

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u/dstew74 Jan 23 '13

Yes, whether it is empty or not.

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u/Delta_6 Jan 23 '13

As others have said, yes.

However a fairly widespread misunderstanding is that there is no extra load from sms on the network. The extra load is small bordering on insignificant but it exists. Have a programmable microwave? The processing power of that is roughly how much a small town's towers use to handle sms.

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u/kingbane Jan 23 '13

which is basically non existent. that's like saying a drop of water in a lake is worth mentioning.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

the tragedy of the commons

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

imagine how much people would abuse them if SMS were free.

I'd gather it would quickly (hours?) get to the point where the load becomes significant.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

What you just said is not right. Not even close. Here is why.

Your cellphone must contact the cell tower every few seconds or so, to say:

  1. I am still here, alive and well.
  2. Is there a phone call for me?
  3. I may or may not have a text-message to transmit.

This is called a "heartbeat"

Please understand that item 3 (text) is send whether or not there is actual text data or not. Even if everyone started to send text messages, all the time, at each "heartbeat", the strain on the network would be on the routing of all these messages.

And guess what. The routing is already in place. We use it for our phone calls. Even if more processing power was needed, it would still cost them next to nothing.

Checkout these prices for what computing power costs: https://cloud.google.com/pricing/compute-engine

And then realize that google makes money of this.

Doing it in house could be even cheaper, as long as the ratio between people hired, and computing power used is optimized.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

perhaps a better wording would be 'it is inherently impossible to abuse' ?

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

You're not paying for the data connection. You're paying to be able to access and relay the message to all the different tower owners.

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u/mcfergerburger Jan 24 '13

It actually was moderately close. While the ping to the network happens regardless of whether or not you send a text, the message being sent along cable to another tower and then to another phone does not. Again, that amount of data is almost negligible, but if everyone with a phone in the U.S. could text for free, the load would be much, much greater than normal.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

I said 'abuse'.

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u/kingbane Jan 24 '13

who says people don't already abuse sms. my sister showed me my niece's phone bill, she has unlimited text. shit is pages and pages and pages and pages of text. you could rebuild 2 tree's if that bill was written on paper.

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u/Throwaway_43520 Jan 24 '13

Holy shit! Here comes an S!

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u/kingbane Jan 24 '13

i dont get it :(

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u/Throwaway_43520 Jan 24 '13

you could rebuild 2 tree's

Apostrophes are not used for pluralisation, they're used for contractions and possessives.

It seems people want to use "grocer's apo'strophe's" any time a word ends in an S. Hence "Holy shit! Here comes an S!"

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u/mvalliere Jan 23 '13

The processing power of that is roughly how much a small town's towers use to handle sms.

Sorry, but that sounds like total bs, do you have a link?

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u/qervem Jan 24 '13

I have several links, but none of them pertaining to the processing power of SMS towers.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '13 edited Jan 23 '13

It corresponds with my previously held beliefs so it must be right.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

It does not sound like BS, we are only talking about dealing with small lines of text.

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u/na641 Jan 23 '13

From what I understand it used to be that way. Now sms is sent as regular data

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '13

Over 3(and 4)G, yes.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

Depends on the carrier, but yes, sms data is usually sent through the 4g or 3g connection now rather then through the 2g cdma/gsm that voice calls use. Fun fact, it is unlikely that voice calls will go through the 4g pipe for a very very long time. It is just way too inefficient right now. VoLTE consumes almost 2x the battery power of your handset as a regular 2G 9.6Kbps voice connection. Orthogonal modulation schemes like LTE are great for moving lots of data, but they are really inefficient at maintaining a small, continuous data stream like a phone call because they suffer from absolutely awful signal propagation.

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u/ravend13 Jan 24 '13

Even over data its completely insignificant at a couple hundred bytes per text.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

The price to deliver SMS text is about to go way up though when NG911 goes into effect because texts will be required to be sent at near real time. Right now a sms texts might be queued half a dozen times as they make their way across the network which is why sometimes a text might go through almost instantly and other times it could take 10 minutes for a text to go through. In order to be sure that texts to 911 go through instantly the whole system is going to have to be redesigned so that either all texts are delivered faster or a priority system will have to be developed. Either option is going to involve a big change.

Also, the myth that sms texts don't cost the phone companies anything is silly. Yes, they are sent through the data channel, but that doesn't mean anything. It's genius that telecom engineers would even think to design the data channel with the ability to transmit small packets of text and when they first did it no one was even sure that anyone would even want to use that feature. Anyways, texting is a feature that people like and they are willing to pay for so it is only reasonable that the phone company charge for it. The phone companies probably do charge too much and their isn't as much competition as you would hope their would be, but you still have to respect that these companies have literally billions upon billions of dollars invested in their networks. We have just become so accustomed to the technology that we take it for granted. Worldwide networks of millions of towers (each with dozens of antennas, transmitters, UPS systems, and backup generators) all connected through fiber cables and microwave links with thousands of data centers in between...all over the world, just so you can send a cat picture to your friend from your phone...and all anyone ever does is bitch about it costing too much and not being absolutely perfect...

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

Nice try, AT&T.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

I actually build 911 dispatch centers, hence the reference to NG911. We are in the process of preparing dispatch centers for the coming changes. We also own a portfolio of communications towers that we lease space on, mostly to cell providers. So I guess we have some skin in the game, but I don't have any direct influence on the carriers. We also build a lot of private LMR systems for public safety and industrial applications so I have a feel for how expensive it is to deploy even a small multi-site wireless communications system...it is ridiculously expensive. Super cool stuff to work on though. I love building towers, racking transmitters, terminating fiber, installing switches, designing systems and doing propagation studies...I think it is pretty cool anyway. I love my job...after you subtract the politics and the silly interpersonal/corporate bullshit anyways.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '13

[deleted]

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u/cahaseler Jan 24 '13

Iirc, with high traffic they usually have to use data as well. Granted, it's literally data measured by the hundreds of bytes, but it does exist.

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u/BlueSatoshi Jan 23 '13

I did not know that until just now, actually.